Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That!

Massachusetts has probably 2 million married or cohabiting heterosexual couples. We now have maybe 2 thousand legally married homosexual couples, and no doubt many same-sexers who have not taken advantage of their newly granted rights to matrimony. But by any reasonable estimate, the number of hetero couples is 20, 50, or 100 times as large as the number of homosexual couples.

So which population would the Globe choose to write a gossipy Sunday magazine story about infidelity disclosures among friends? Guess. A nice little touch is to obscure both the marital status and the ‘orientation’ of all parties mentioned in the article until the byline:

David Valdes Greenwood lives with his husband and daughter in Arlington.

What would I call this? Trying to spin favor for an anti-democratic and judiciary-imposed condition of law. Nice try. Color me unpersuaded.

Summers' Best Epitaph

Is written by Harvey Silvergate in the Boston Phoenix:

"This was about more than whether I speculated in an area in which I am not a recognized expert. It was about whether the modern American academy is any longer a safe haven for true diversity of thought and opinion, and whether some subjects are so toxic to a subsection of the academic left that they are taboo. We extol the virtues of diversity in a wide variety of programs — including mandatory freshman orientation and “sensitivity training” programs that come perilously close to being exercises in thought-reform — but we penalize diversity of knowledge and opinion. "

Like some politicians and Islamo-fascists, the extreme left of the academe has no concept of shame. Shame must be a useless vestige of liberal thought, I guess.

Long live The Sole Progressive World View.

Out of Pocket

I am out of pocket until 25 February, so posts will be sparse. Sorry.

How Important are Demographics?

Mark Steyn writes in the Australian:

When the fastest-breeding demographic group on the planet is also the one most resistant to the pieties of the social-democratic state that's a profound challenge. Yes, yes, I know Islam is very varied, and Riyadh has a vibrant gay scene, and the Khartoum Feminist Publishing Collective now has so many members they've rented lavish new offices above the clitorectomy clinic. I don't claim to have all the answers, except when I'm being interviewed live on TV. But that's better than claiming, as most of [Aussie MP Danna] Vale's disparagers do, that there aren't even any questions.

A superb read as usual right here.

Catholics May Riot Next

Over an Indian film director's choice for an actress to play Mother Teresa.

Post the cartoons as wallpaper?

Andrew Sullivan advocates persuasively in the Times of London that folks like me are mixed up about the cartoons:

And so we have two media now in the world. We have the mainstream media whose job is increasingly not actually to disseminate information but to act as a moral steward for what is fit to print, to become an arbiter of sensitivity, good taste and political correctness. And we have web pages like Wikipedia or the blogosphere to disseminate actual facts, data, images and opinions that readers can judge with the benefit of all the facts, not just some of them.

If you want to see why newspapers are struggling, surely this is part of the reason. They have forgotten their fundamental task: to provide information.

The One True Answer

On today's editorial page we find blind faith stated in its purest form(emphasis mine):

POLITICAL MONEY is at the heart of the ethical scandals in Washington. Most members of Congress have not been chastened enough by the tawdry performance of their peers to support the one true answer to the problem -- public financing of campaigns -- but many have suggested smaller fixes.

Where's the Globe, Dear?

Can you find a newspaper in this picture?

They may have delivered the Globe to my house today, but I won't be able to tell until I hit it with a snow blower or spring comes. Today I am reduced to reading the Globe on the Internet, and with very limited time.

What to do? Sunday is Joan Vennochi day, so I can at least read her column and she does not disappoint. Her column today is quite an accurate assessment of the Democrat’s chronic dilemma with respect to national security policy. The Republicans have given up the high ground on the question of fiscal restraint (though you would never know it from the loyal opposition; the Dems continue to attack them for spending too little on social programs). But today Joan correctly notes that the Dems have offered no security alternative as a party, and a wide variety of alternatives as individuals (and as wanna-be presidents).

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, continue to paralyze Democrats, who can't get beyond ''no" as their official national security policy.

The Democrats' paralysis began immediately after 9/11. Spurred by patriotism, a desire to look nonpartisan and a fear of looking weak on terror, they bought into the Bush response. They endorsed the USA Patriot Act and authorized Bush to invade Iraq. Now, moving beyond the much-maligned neo-con strategy to their own national security vision is proving to be difficult…

Then, Coretta Scott King's funeral intervened. Four presidents attended -- Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and the Republican father and son, George H.W. and George W. Bush. Carter used the platform to allude to the Bush administration wiretapping controversy. He mentioned the difficulties that Mrs. King and her husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., endured as they became the target of secret government wiretapping; he failed to mention that attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, a Democrat, authorized the King wiretapping. In their funeral remarks, the Bushes took the gracious approach, leaving the Democrats to look tastelessly partisan.

Here Joan is being too gracious herself. To put it succinctly, at the King funeral Bush did not just “take the gracious approach”. He behaved graciously in the face of insult. The Democrats (especially Carter) did not simply “look tastelessly partisan”. They behaved tastelessly and without a sense of the time or place. Their behavior embarrassed only themselves – something they have done often enough lately that they are at risk of forming a habit. And, by the way, which political party carps about the “decline of civility”? It seems to be the same folks who can’t control their impulses at televised funerals.

Joan concludes:

But until Democrats come up with a post-9/11 strategy, the Bush White House and the GOP get the last laugh.

Who makes you feel safer?

Hillary Clinton or John McCain?

And while editorial cartoons cause embassies to burn in the Middle East over cries for beheading and blood, Hillary shows her normal off-timing by referring to the terrorist threat as “the fear card”.

The west is not playing a card game at present. I wish we were.

How Would You Like Your Crow, Sir?

Me wrong!

The Globe Ombud and a reader both note that the unemployment data cited in yesterday's Globe is from last December. That is the date of the most recent New Hampshire state statistics. Here they are below:


Here is the smoking gun

Richard,

Here is the data that is almost certainly the source used in the article, from the NH state website.

I stand corrected and apologize for shooting from the hip. Sorry. However, I still believe this article had a quite negative tone for one about an economy with 3.5% unemployment.

h

The Barber as Economist

Today’s Boston Globe carries a severely biased article on page 1 concerning President Bush’s trip and speech yesterday in Manchester NH, headlined "Applause, skepticism for president in N.H.". At the Globe, the level of skepticism blots out not only any applause, but even basic facts and any pretext of objective reporting. The story merits only a few column inches on the first page, while the Grammys get 4 times as much page 1 space. Rather than quoting the subject of the story first, the first actual quote concerning the economy comes from one Roland Bergeron, a Manchester barber, who says of the economy:

“They say the economy is good, but it’s all jobs that are $5, $6, $7 dollars an hour,”

Also quoted concerning the economy on page 1 is Mr. Lee Friedman, a Manchester bookstore owner:

“The economy? It’s still here, that’s about all you can say about it.”

The story then states that the unemployment rate in New Hampshire is 3.5 percent, “below the national rate of 4.9 percent”. A 3.5 percent unemployment rate is hardly a sign of an economy in distress! Furthermore the latest national unemployment rate was 4.7 percent, not 4.9 percent.

How much effort does this take?

All it takes to verify this is a 15-second trip to the front web page of the Bureau of Labor Statistics which shows the current unemployment rate as 4.7 percent, not the 4.9% reported by the Boston Globe. This complete carelessness with respect to facts is indicative, perhaps, of the relative effort expended on fact vs. opinion within this story.

Later on page 20 this story does actually include 3 snippets quoted from the President of the United States concerning the federal budget (the event that supposedly is the subject of this article). Then follows a long and windy passage from a written statement issued in response by the office of the senior senator from Massachusetts, who shows in his staff-written text their usual flair for demagoguery that served so well during the recent Alito confirmation hearings.

The barber-economist’s assertion that the millions of new jobs created in what the media used to call the “jobless recovery” could also be tested with labor statistics. I am no economist, but it is reasonable to presume that new jobs would in the aggregate pay less than existing jobs, since more of them are likely to be entry-level. To make a more objective evaluation, one would have to compare the normalized wages of new jobs during this recovery with those created during past recoveries. This is a piece of economic analysis that his way beyond my expertise. But at least, for heaven’s sake, even a complete economic no-nothing like me can find the current US unemployment rate on the Web. Why can’t the Boston Globe?

How to End Globe Bias

A letter today has one suggestion:

I FIND all of your editorial cartoons deeply offensive, morally, religiously, philosophically, and spiritually. In fact, I don't like your editorials, either. And the editorializing in your news coverage is annoying as well.

In keeping with your cowardly policy not to offend anyone, kindly cease publication at once.

BOB FLAVELL
Duxbury

Thoroughly Progressive Policies

Administrators for the Brockton school district say “Brockton schools have for years had among the state's most thorough and progressive policies on student sexual harassment” according to today’s Boston Globe. In a statement yesterday Brockton school superintendent, Basan Nembirkow, said:

‘The safety and well-being of Brockton Public School students and staff is of the utmost importance to us and we take all allegations of sexual harassment very seriously…Principals are trained to handle these difficult situations and they are assisted, as needed, by the district's sexual harassment officer in handling each situation."

Commenting on one current Brockton sexual case in today’s Globe:

''This was done right by the book," said Cynthia E. McNally, a district spokeswoman. ''This was thoroughly investigated."

Apparently so. The school district decided to suspend the sexual offender from school and then referred his case to the Plymouth County District Attorney’s office. The DA won’t take up the case, though. Why? The offender is only 6 years old.

The school district cannot comment on specifics of the case but according to the Globe story the boy’s mother “said school administrators told her that her son's infraction was to place his hand inside the waistband of a girl's pants, touching the skin on her back.”

While the Brockton school district may not lead the state in academic achievement, they are surely leaders in “thorough and progressive policies on student sexual harassment”.

Liberal Activists Who Hate

Peter Canellos sizes up another Kerry presidential campaign in his Boston Globe column today. He notes concerning Kerry’s leadership of the Senate filibusterers:

The gratitude of liberal activists who hate Alito will be helpful if Kerry runs for president again. His willingness to pick up the flag and fight when no one except Edward M. Kennedy was willing to join him may impress those who think Kerry is a flip-flopper who has never exerted leadership in the Senate. And even the ridicule may be useful, in the sense that voters need to purge their frustration with Kerry before reconsidering him.

And Concerning Kerry’s utter blindness to the image his personality projects:

Kerry's sense of imagery hasn't improved since 2004: He was attending the World Economic Forum in Switzerland when he announced that he would lead the filibuster. [White House spokesman] McClellan seized on the scene to revive the Bush campaign's 2004 depiction of Kerry as an aristocrat at play, goofing on the ski slopes. But it would have been just as much of a political hit to tell the truth: Kerry was hobnobbing with a bunch of international leaders.

Yes. A point already noted here. But DO note Canellos’ description of the anti-Alito zealots whose approval Kerry was seeking. This is another Kinsleyan gaffe:

The gratitude of liberal activists who hate Alito will be helpful if Kerry runs for president again.

Here we see the words “liberal activists who hate” in print for perhaps the first time in the Boston Globe. From reading the Globe editorial page one would surmise that “hate” is found only on the political right. Now the demon has been spotted on the left as well.

And is it possible that rather than Sam Alito, the true object of this ha…uuuh…antipathy is someone else?

Finally I can’t help but wonder how the Globe story would read if someone other than Kerry (say George W Bush, just for example) threw a bone to the extreme wing of his political party. I doubt a Globe analysis would call it “his smartest political move in a long time”.

Have a Coke and a Smile (and a Nudge and a Wink)

Today’s Boston Globe has news that an Atlanta bank waited 2 years to record a $1.2M mortgage it gave Deval Patrick in 2003, while Patrick was an executive VP of Atlanta-based Coca-Cola. The bank’s #1 customer is…you’ll never guess…Coca-Cola. More interesting is the fact that the Patrick family now has a total of $6M in mortgages outstanding on their 2 homes, and these loans seem to have been written at well below market rates.

Remember, please, that Patrick is in the party of the little people; the folks who are in politics to fight for the poor and for our children's future.

Weekend's Best is Again Steyn

Mark Steyn scores the funniest explanation for the mainstream media’s sudden respect for religion:

…we should note that in the Western world "artists" "provoke" with the same numbing regularity as young Muslim men light up other countries' flags. When Tony-winning author Terence McNally writes a Broadway play in which Jesus has gay sex with Judas, the New York Times and Co. rush to garland him with praise for how "brave" and "challenging" he is. The rule for "brave" "transgressive" "artists" is a simple one: If you're going to be provocative, it's best to do it with people who can't be provoked.

Thus, NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom "Will & Grace," in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes -- "Cruci-fixin's." On the other hand, the same network, in its coverage of the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of "respect" for the Muslim faith.

Which means out of respect for their ability to locate the executive vice president's home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage.

Steyn’s column yesterday is worth a read, as usual.

'The Editor' is not One Person

Richard Chacón corrects me for referring to "the editor" of the Globe as a if it was a single person:

Regarding your post, may I suggest one clarification that your readers might find useful: the editorial is often a reflection of the editor of the editorial page, not the news pages. So that when you refer to the "editor" in your post, it could leave an impression that the person is the editor for the news pages, as well. I think it's important for readers to understand the difference.

A valid point, which as a long-time WSJ reader is a distinction I should have made. In the future I'll modify my terminology.

The Heartbreak of Dyspepsia

Sunday the Boston Globe prints a dyspeptic letter supporting our filbustering US Senators. It is from a lady living a neighboring town, who wrote it perhaps during the very hours when several embassies were being burned by angry mobs in the middle east on account of certain Danish editorial cartoons. This unfortunate lady also seems inclined to violence:

As a US citizen, I am bombarded daily with new atrocities, travesties, and crimes committed by the Bush administration. I am heartsick and increasingly pessimistic, every day, about stopping what I see as a march toward fascism and disaster. And while I have been an activist most of my life, I honestly don't know what to do now, because I am beginning to doubt that what is being done to my country by my fellow countrymen can be stopped by peaceful measures alone.

If you "don't know what to do now", lady, for a start you could work to win the next election.

Before then will somebody please send this poor lady on a long vacation somewhere in the middle east (Syria would be a good destination) so she might perhaps get herself a clue about the terms she uses so freely?

More About 'Domestic Spying'

I was not the only person miffed that the Globe stamped NSA surveillance of international phone calls as "domestic spying". To his credit, the Globe Ombudsman, forwarded these questions to reporter Peter Canellos and posted the response on his blog here:

Canellos' response indicates that the Globe will use terms like "domestic surveillance" in the future.

The main point of my letter was that the article gave no context or explanation concerning which calls were intercepted. A simple explanation like this appearing somewhere in the article would be adequate:

The dispute concerns the procedures required for the NSA to intercept calls and emails between the United States and foreign countries.

As a further example of such practice, consider the "Credit Markets" column in the Wall Street Journal, which states in every column that "bond prices move inversely with rates". The statement helps people who are new to the column understand the context, although the relationship explained is not a judgment but instead one of mathematics. Yet the column restates the relationship every day. Here is the end of Friday's column:

At 4 p.m., the benchmark 10-year note was up 9/32 point, or $2.8125 per $1,000 face value, at 99 24/32. Its yield fell to 4.531% from 4.565% Thursday, as yields move inversely to prices. The 30-year bond was up 1 point at 110 29/32 to yield 4.635%.

Given that the label "domestic spying" is a matter of judgment, is a term considered by some to be inaccurate, and should not be confused with the actions of the FBI during the 1960s which were accurately called 'domestic spying', it is quite important for responsible journals to provide context when using this term.

Thanks to Richard Chacón for doing a difficult job well.

More on the Cartoons

This whole episode seems to be spinning quite out of control. Middle-eastern countries are calling for economic boycotts (a very legitimate form of protest, as is the “buy Danish” groundswell). Angry mobs burn embassies, and the Boston Globe editors take the right course (not publishing the cartoons) but for the wrong reasons. They opine:

Journalists in free societies have a healthy impulse to assert their hard-won right to insult powerful forces in society.

Sorry. Journalists have no “right to insult” those who are powerful or not. Their right is to publish facts and opinion without regard to their impact on the powerful, provided these facts and opinions are judged to be significant.

As a silly but illustrative example, publishing a picture of the President of the United State in his pajamas could well meet the Globe’s criterion of “insult powerful forces in society”. But to publish such a picture would be inappropriate unless the President had chosen to be seen in his pajamas, which would give the picture journalistic significance. What separates organs like the Globe from the tabloids is that they (in theory) hold to a higher standard of what material is important enough to merit publication. The editor seems to have forgotten this aspect here, and this is not the only time the Globe has confused the right to publish embarrassing facts with a “right to insult”. This is the sophomoric confusion between freedom and license.

Explaining their decision not to publish the Danish cartoons the editor writes:

…publishing the cartoons reflects an obtuse refusal to accept the profound meaning for a billion Muslims of Islam's prohibition against any pictorial representation of the prophet.

This assertion would be more creditable if the Globe had some history of applying it consistently. There are about a billion Catholics on this planet, and many hundreds of millions of Evangelical Christians. Can the editor name any similar occasion where the Globe has forsaken its self-proclaimed “right to insult” in deference to their religious sensibilities?

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh did some research concerning today’s Globe editorial ‘Forms of intolerance’ which I commented on above. Trolling through the archives of past Globe editorials he dredges up three referring to the NEA, Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" and the Brooklyn Museum's display of an image of the Virgin Mary covered in feces. Volokh observes (!) that considerations of sensitivity to religious believers are difficult to find in Globe editorials about these controversies. While he finds much that he agrees with, he concludes:

Yet where in those editorials are the admonitions about the need for "respect" of religious groups? The condemnations of the juxtaposition of bodily excretions with religious figures as "schoolboy prank[s]"? The denunciations of the art as undermining the "ultimate Enlightenment value" of "tolerance"? The condemnations of the artists, and of those NEA and museum decision makers who used their discretion to judge the work artistically excellent, as "obtuse"? And, of course, the suggestion that the works are "no less hurtful to most [Christians] than Nazi caricatures of Jews or Ku Klux Klan caricatures of blacks are to those victims of intolerance"?

Why the difference?

A good question that deserves an answer from Morrissey Boulevard.

The Big Party Looking Pretty Small

Making the man look small --as if he needs help with that!

The Boston Globe does a quite fair job today of following up on the embarrassing stories this week concerning Bay State Democrat office-holders and office-seekers.

Tom Reilly gets treated to the nasty photo seen here which appears above the fold on page 1. I would say this photo borders on nasty propaganda in terms of making the candidate appear small in more ways than one. Add to that Reilly’s further self-inflicted wounds while explaining the La Fleur fiasco:

''This is a whole different level of politics, and it's never been my strong suit, and I have to improve on that. I acknowledge and take responsibility for the process that was not as complete and as thorough as it can be."

Some process! And furthermore he’s an attorney, a field that I always associate as maintaining an obsession with process as opposed to results.

There is another story in the Globe noting the holes in Deval Patrick’s late-payment tax story. He left a partnership in a Boston law firm for a $100k+ post in the Justice Department (taking a big pay cut, no doubt), and his wife joined another DC law firm at the same time. So it is quite certain the Patrick family had a mid six-figure income, even when they were working in Washington. They paid an average of ~$175 per month toward their overdue taxes, but were slapped with a lien when even these small payments fell in arrears. So a couple with a mid-six-figure income falls behind in their late tax payments? This will be very difficult to explain to Joe Lunchpail Democrats in October. I’m sure the Republicans can come up with some 100% factual TV ads concerning this that will make Patrick look simply awful. And of course that doesn’t even touch on the cases Patrick chose and argued when he was in Washington. He’s sure given Republican “oppo” researchers plenty of ammunition.

Finally, there is a story about John Kerry posting at the Daily Kos as an "outreach". Outreach to whom? Certainly not to the swing voters in Ohio who swung to Bush and cost him the presidency. Then a column by Scott Lehigh bewailing the week from hell the Mass Dems have been through. Only Senator Chappaquiddick escapes the (really) bad press in the Globe today, as he argues for expanded ‘hate crime’ legislation.

THAT's a Relief

In an article entitled 'Temperatures Rise Over Cartoons Mocking Muhammad' the Grey Lady lectures readers like a pre-school teacher:

Many Muslims say the Danish cartoons reinforce a dangerous confusion between Islam and the Islamist terrorism that nearly all Muslims abhor.

I am SO relieved to read this in The Times. Later in the same article is another tidbit that is unintentionally funny:

In Nablus, on the West Bank, two masked gunmen kidnapped a German from a hotel, thinking he was French or Danish [countries where the cartoons were published], Agence France-Presse reported. They turned him over to the police once they realized their mistake.

Their mistake that was what, exactly? Kidnapping the wrong kind of Infidel? And the police (these being the PA police, formed during the reign Nobel Peace Prize winner Yassir Arafat), what did they do? Give the kidnappers a finder's fee?

Acting in Love: The Cartoon Controversy

“No prophet is without honor, except in his own country.” But it seems the situation is quite reversed with respect to “the Prophet”. He is not honored any more in the west than is the founder of our historical faith, and neither are the religious sensibilities of his followers accorded even a bit of respect.

After shamelessly kowtowing to cultural and moral indifferentism with respect to Islam for decades, why do the Europeans (and soon, no doubt Americans) choose to draw a line with Islam in a matter of their right to flagrantly behave in a way that others find blasphemous?

Reuters UK has a story that says:

"Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the issue had gone beyond a row between Copenhagen and the Muslim world and now centered on Western free speech versus taboos in Islam, which is now the second religion in many European countries…

…Other European dailies printed cartoons mocking the row. Le Monde in Paris ran a sketch of a man whose beard and turban were made up of lines saying "I must not draw Mohammad".

Reuters does not reveal what the first religion in many European countries is, but Christianity (which by now is perhaps the 3^rd or 4^th religion in Europe) teaches that we should not antagonize other people’s faith, even when we have the right to do so. The West should (for once) listen and act according to the teachings of St. Paul in his letter to the Romans. All in the West would to well to contemplate his words before we go out of our way to offend believers in Islam through the exercise of our own freedom:

Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.

For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. It is written:

'As surely as I live,' says the Lord,
'every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will confess to God.'

So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way. As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean. If your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died. Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men.

Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.

Amen.

Seppuku City

This must be ritual suicide week for Massachusetts Democrats.

Last Friday both of Massachusetts’ US Senators embarrassed themselves and peeved their party colleagues by insisting on a futile filibuster attempt that failed by a 72-25 vote.

Monday Alito was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in just in time to attend W’s SOTU address.

Tuesday Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly, the leading Irish-Democrat and lifelong pol running for Governor picks a Haitian-American State Rep named Marie P. St. Fleur as his running mate. It turns out that Marie has a very poor record paying her student loans, taxes, and utility bills, lost a home to foreclosure, and has a federal lien on her current home. But while the patronage-burdened county Registry of Deeds somehow has no record of the lien, the IRS sure does. All this is documented in Wednesday’s Boston Globe.

Wednesday night St. Fleur drops out of the race. But wait! There’s more (as Ronco says)! Also on Wednesday night, just in time for Thursday’s Globe, Clinton administration DoJ official Deval Patrick, the leading African-American and liberal Democratic gubernatorial candidate discloses that he also had a lien placed on him by the IRS for late payments of a negotiated agreement involving back taxes.

Is it Friday yet?

The most perfect and believable statement in all these stories is from a Mr. Thomas M. Ryan, of the registry of deeds:

The public record of the federal tax liability is missing from the Suffolk County Registry of Deeds, where it should be readily available to anyone doing a database search. Secretary of State William F. Galvin, who oversees the Registry, said he is launching an inquiry to make sure no one acted to remove the record.

''At best, it was a clerical error; at worst, it was something else," Galvin said.

Thomas M. Ryan, the first assistant registrar, said that the only plausible explanation is that the Internal Revenue Service did not file the lien with the Registry.

(Perfect! Can’t you just hear him saying “It’s the other bureaucracy’s fault!”)

The Globe found a public record of the federal lien in a database in US District Court. The record shows that the IRS filed the lien against St. Fleur and Jean B. Lauture, her husband, on April 26, 2005, for taxes due on their joint return for 2003. An IRS spokeswoman said yesterday that such liens are not discharged until they are fully satisfied.

Yesterday's Globe said the Massachusetts Democratic party was withering at the roots. Judging from today, it seems to be rotting at the head as well.